Day 253, Sunday March 2nd.

Day 253, Sunday March 2^nd.

shoreline by Cove

Waves behind Dawson were big

 A leisurely Sunday morning but both of us are anxious to be on our way up the Coast of Cat Island. We can only handle being at one anchorage a couple of days.  Our goal today is Arthur Town where Caroline Wright (our good friend from Calgary) was born.  We get underway by 10 with a reef in the main and the 110% jib sail.  It is not long until we also reef the jib in.  Our wind indicator is not calibrated properly so we were not sure of the wind speed.  As always we were on the Jazzy scale.  Julie called the neighbour who was sailing parallel to us and he indicated he saw gusts up to 35 with the bulk of the winds registering 25 to 30, no wonder Julie was not having fun.  We were quite heeled over and that was with us also “spilling” the wind by easing out the main sheet.  We started the engine to help stabilize us and decided to pull into a closer anchorage.  After 2 hours we landed at “Cove”.

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At anchor

We anchored and dinghied to shore to see the sights.  The shoreline here is called the iron shore and it is not very friendly.  There is a patch of sand for us to land on with the dinghy, but the rest of it is old coral which is bumpy, hard and dried.  Sure would not want to have the boat blown ashore here.

Dawson in front of another closed restaurant

The sights were minimal.  A few banana trees which they grow in sink holes, a few goats, lots of abandoned buildings of which many of them are loyalist ruins from the days of US independence from Briton.  We wave to everyone who we pass or drives by.  It is just the thing to do.  There is an abandoned vacation building which is falling into disrepair called Club Paradise, and one business we pass.  The business is a bar; however looking in the window it is just a room with a few boxes in it.  We take a pass on stopping for some refreshments.  The outer islands are much poorer than the northern islands.  There is not much tourism on the outer islands which brings in a lot of money to the country.  It seems like very few people have regular jobs.

Dinghy at shore (we have learned to park it facing forward

We return to the mothership and do some reading on Sidney Poitier as he was from Cat island, and relaxing.  Today is shower day.  We thought we were running out of water but the second tank had more than we thought so we don’t have to ration the water.  Our hygene has been suffering a bit. 

Tonight we are again cooking some mahi mahi.  It is just fabulous.  We highly recommend grilling it with a marinade of oil, lime, and garlic and pepper.  Tonight we put the marinade on about an hour prior to grilling, but the other day we just brushed it on after the fillets had been flipped.  Both ways were equally good. 

Cheers

Julie and Dawson